Education seen as plus in battling Alzheimer's

Education appears to offer some protection from memory loss and other ravages of the tangles and plaques of Alzheimer's disease, researchers reported Monday.

Looking at slides of brain tissue from dead clergy who had participated in the study, the researchers found that when damage from Alzheimer's was similar, the better-educated volunteers had shown higher mental function, according to the findings published Tuesday in the journal Neurology.

Researchers are not sure how education helps to preserve brain function. People with more education may simply live healthier lifestyles, eating better, exercising regularly and having greater access to medical care, said Dr. David Bennett, the lead researcher and professor of neurological science and director of Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center.

Dr. Gary Small, professor at the Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles and author of "The Memory Bible," said these findings are probably the result of a combination of two commonly held theories on brain resiliency.

The "use-it-or-lose-it theory" predicts that college exercises neurons, protecting them into the future. Another theory predicts that people who attend college are smarter and have "good brain genes."

"The fact that the plaques were the same and memory scores were different adds fuel to the theory that the `use-it-or-lose-it theory' makes sense," said Small.

This study, part of a larger study of 900 participants called the Religious Orders Study, was conducted on older Catholic clergy from about 40 groups across the U.S.

Bennett used an analogy to illustrate how this study of Alzheimer's approaches the "flip side" of disease prevention. "If your roof is leaking, you can put a large pail to catch the water or you can patch the roof," Bennett said. "Both work. But with Alzheimer's, patching the roof may be more difficult."